Have her cake and eat it

MEGHAN MARKLE will be celebrating her first birthday as a member of the Royal Family tomorrow, but will this affect her celebrations? By Christine Younan / Published 3rd August 2018 GETTY ROYAL: Meghan Markle will not be allowed to have a slice of her cake first Tomorrow Meghan Markle turns 37 and she will be celebrating her first birthday since marrying Prince Harry, 33, in May.The Duchess of Sussex is going to attend the wedding of Harry’s childhood pal Charlie Van Straubenzee in Berkshire during the day.As the former US actress has become a member of the Royal Family, she will have to abide by a set of birthday rules.Protocols may affect her birthday and restrict her from doing several normal birthday celebrations. Meghan Markle dazzles in green as she lands in Dublin for Ireland tour The Duchess of Sussex wore a knee-length forest green Givenchy outfit, while Prince Harry wore a classic suit 1 / 12 REUTERS Meghan Markle dazzles in green as she lands … [Read more...] about Meghan Markle birthday RULES: Why the Duchess CAN’T have her cake and eat it

BRUSSELS has slammed Theresa May's “have cake and eat it” new Brexit plan with claims EU bosses will need her to water it down even more. And they have compared David Davis to a rat leaving a sinking ship claiming leading Brexiteers are “leaving for higher ground” as they fail to back the Prime Minister’s negotiating strategy. But in a withering assessment of his role, several Brussels figures suggest it will not actually make any difference to the talks. One diplomat told The Sun: "It's not going to lead to a substantial change in the Brexit negotiations because in the last couple of months David Davis wasn't any more the main negotiator, it was Olly Robbins.” Another said: "The article 50 negotiation has so far taken up several hundreds of hours in negotiation. Of which minister Davis was here for four this year. "His role has always been more defined in London. So that’s where they will have to look at the consequences. On this end we will … [Read more...] about Brussels slam Theresa May’s ‘have cake and eat it’ Brexit plan and says David Davis is a ‘rat leaving a sinking ship’

We all remember Marilyn Monroe breathlessly crooning “Happy Birthday, Mr President,” to JFK, in 1962, on Kennedy’s 45th birthday. It was Donald Trump’s birthday on Friday and I found myself wondering what contemporary star of film, music or TV you could find who would be willing to sing to him. It’s a short and fairly grim list of right-wing celebrities. Roseanne Barr? Ted Nugent? Gene Simmons from Kiss? Maybe Kanye West? Not quite Marilyn in her prime, is it? Although, let’s be frank, it would be pretty incredible to see how uncomfortable Trump would get if he had Kanye – or Simmons in full make-up – right up in his face screaming “Happy Birthday” at him. So Trump didn’t get a celebrity-led sing-along as part of his birthday celebrations last week. He got lots of other stuff, though. Have you been keeping up? While Trump was probably expecting to be basking in adulation after his atrocious fiasco of a photo opportunity … [Read more...] about Happy birthday Mr President but don’t think you can have your cake and eat it

Amid fierce cabinet squabbling over the minutiae of customs policy, it is easy to lose sight of the big picture: a battle to decide what kind of country the UK will be after Brexit. On the face of it, Wednesday’s Brexit sub-committee meeting promises little in the way of enlightenment. Downing Street sources have been playing down the prospect of any decision over which of two customs proposals the UK will take into the next phase of negotiations with the EU. Even if the cabinet does decide between the hi-tech “maximum facilitation” model or the highly integrated new customs partnership (NCP) approach, the EU remains deeply sceptical that either will prove satisfactory. But postponing another painful showdown may no longer be enough for Theresa May. One lasting legacy of this week’s focus on customs has been to cast doubt on her government’s overall compromise approach to Brexit. What the Europeans have dismissed as the UK’s … [Read more...] about Customs row punctures ‘have-cake-and-eat-it’ Brexit fantasy

SO did the soft or hard Brexiters win? Is May’s speech a “Norway minus” a “Canada plus” or just a wish list more than a credible plan? Certainly her speech was full of contradictions. The UK will leave the customs union. And it will have less access to the EU’s single market. But despite this, Mrs May wants somehow to protect integrated, cross-border supply chains and to avoid a hard border for Northern Ireland. Yet she had nothing new to say on customs and so no new approach to the Irish border question. She repeated ideas from last summer: proposing either a complex, untested approach to “mirroring” EU tariffs for goods or, magically, streamlining customs’ co-operation to ensure no physical infrastructure on the Irish border. And, of course, there would be no border in the Irish Sea. Mrs May promised to ask for associate membership of key EU regulatory agencies for medicines, chemicals and aviation. She wants too a … [Read more...] about Analysis:Why May’s cherry-picking, cake and eat it proposals won’t wash